Glacir has just released our biggest update since launching.  We have made updates to a large amount of the site.  I won’t get into all the specifics but will talk about our biggest update, Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect allows you to link your Glacir and Facebook accounts.  This makes it easy to get started on Glacir, as well as giving you the ability to send information back to Facebook.  With Facebook Connect on Glacir, you can do all of the following:

• Find and connect to Facebook friends on Glacir with one click
• Invite Facebook friends to Glacir with one click
• Post Glacir messages about your Six Degrees of Separation to your Facebook wall
• Stay updated on your Six Degrees of Separation with Glacir notifications sent to Facebook periodically

Glacir believes that integrating Facebook with our service will make it easier for you to build, explore, and harness your own Six Degrees of Separation.  If you already have a Glacir account, go to www.glacir.com/connect to link your Facebook account to Glacir.  If you don’t have a Glacir account, please visit www.glacir.com/join to get started with Glacir and to connect your Facebook account.

Let us know what you think, if you have any questions or problems, by telling us in our feedback forum.

February 2009 – That’s when I contacted Zak. I had heard about Glacir through a friend and was interested in helping out. After a few meetings, Brad and Zak (both of whom I had the pleasure of meeting while attending Miami University) brought me on board.

My name is Dave and I am the Lead Web Developer at Glacir. Responsibilities include designing database tables, writing stored procedures, optimizing for performance, building business objects, data access layers, validation,  the e-mail subsystem, integrating with Facebook Connect, and a myriad of other pieces of functionality that support the site.

In short, I am a technical architect. I make sure Glacir can scale to support an infinite number of users, that we can maintain the code with ease, and that there are no performance problems.

I’ve been involved with various projects throughout my life, but none have been as challenging and rewarding as Glacir. What we’ve accomplished both before and after our September launch has been nothing short of amazing. In the beginning, Glacir was ideas, the vague scribblings of a business plan, rough prototypes, and dreams. We’ve come a long way in a short period of time and in the coming months, expect to see many more great things.

Some big changes have just been launched on Glacir. We have changed the degrees page to be a living timeline of your degrees of separation connection activity.  Listed below are some of the major changes:

• People on your degrees page are now arranged chronologically, with the most recent on top.
• New connections will now be flagged as “new” to make it easy for you to explore new people you are connected to
• You can now see all of your 6 degrees on your map at once

These changes have been made to make the degrees pages your center for all six degrees of separation information. Log on to your account now to explore the changes.  Stay tuned! Coming very soon is Facebook Connect! It will truly transform how you use Glacir!

Watch the video below to learn more about upcoming Glacir features!

Glacir just launched a new feature that allows you to display links to your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other network profile pages. Glacir sees this being a great way for you to allow other Glacir members to explore your other online identities.

For example, it will allow you to go to someone’s Glacir profile and then see if they have a Twitter account, and if they do, you can visit their Twitter profile and then decide to follow them if you would like. Or if you want to see someone’s professional info, click on their LinkedIn link.  Want to see a Glacir member’s photos?  Perhaps they have a Facebook page; click on their Facebook link and explore their Facebook profile.

My Links show up as icons under a person’s profile.  To set up your links, go to your profile page and click on the “Add links to other networks” link below your profile information.  On the “Edit links” window, you will need to copy and paste your URLs to your other network profile pages into the respective fields.  It is important to make sure you copy and paste the address of your profile page on these other sites and not your homepage.

My Links is helping Connect Humanity by giving other Glacir users the ability to explore your online presence outside of Glacir.  Log on now, set up your own links, and explore other people’s links!  Let us know what you think, or if you have any problems.

Watch the video below to learn where the Glacir comes from and what it means.

Check out our first YouTube video!  It is a short “elevator pitch” of the Glacir concept.  Watch it below!

Glacir strives to be highly responsive to our users when they are having problems, have questions, or have suggestions for improvement of our services.  We just launched a new tool that will help foster these conversations.  You can access the the tool from the new “Feedback” tab on the right-hand side of every page on Glacir.  Here is a little more about what this tool does.

Have an Idea?

Have an idea on how to make Glacir better?  Share it on the new feedback forum!  Others can then join in the conversation and help shape your idea. The Glacir team contributes to and monitors these  ideas to gauge how interested users are in new ideas.  If there is enough interest, we may implement your suggestion!  Also, if you see an idea you like, join the conversation and help us refine it.

Have a Question?

Are you having trouble finding something? Do you have a question about how to do something on Glacir? Let us know about it on the new feedback forum!  Other users and Glacir developers can help answer your questions!   You can also see questions asked by others and the answers to their questions.

Having Problems with Glacir?

Tell us about them!  If we don’t know about problems, we can’t fix them.  This new tool allows you to tell us when you are having a problem and allows others who are having the same problem to join the conversation. This tool will help the Glacir team track frequency of problems, talk to people who are having problems, and let you know once a solution has been implemented.  Please use this whenever you are having a problem with Glacir. By reporting a problem with Glacir, you will help us identify there is something wrong and help us fix the problem much faster.

Have Praise?

If you would like to share your positive thoughts with us, you can do that too!  Tell us what you like about Glacir, we love to hear from users about the things they like!

Glacir has just launched the first of many new features…Talkbox.  Talkbox gives Glacir users the ability to communicate with one another on Glacir.  It is a unique communications platform that creates a stream of talks (short messages of 256 characters or less) that can be filtered by person.  Below are the basics of Talkbox:

• Talks are PRIVATE; only you and the person you send the message to can view them.
• Each talk is limited to 256 characters
• You will be notified of new talks via an email and on your dashboard
• You can control who can send you talks by going to  www.glacir.com/advanced-privacy

There are two ways to enter talkbox.

1. “Talkbox” link on your dashboard

• Shows your talk stream (all messages sent by you AND to you)
• Clicking  ”reply” above a message automatically filters the conversation in the Talkbox to just those talks between you and the person of interest and allows you to send a message to that person

2. “Talk!” button located on other peoples profiles under their profile picture

• Shows only the messages between you and the person whose profile you are viewing
• You can instantly send a message to this person from here

Log on to your Glacir account now to send some talks.   Tell us what you think of it, we are open to your feedback.  Other exciting features are coming soon, stay tuned!

I have been getting a lot of questions lately from my friends and family about Glacir.  One of the most common questions they ask is, “Can I tell people about this website or not?” …. As you can imagine, my answer is always a resounding YES!

We aren’t trying to keep this a secret. We want the world to know about it!

The Glacir concept requires a large and diverse user base to truly show people how far their connections reach across the planet.

So not only should you tell everyone you know about Glacir, but you should try to invite people that live far away from you, and you should implore them to do the same.  Glacir is built on the idea of being a worldly concept.  For that we need a diverse user base. Do you know anyone who lives in a foreign country, or distant state?  If so, invite them!